LONG-TERM GOAL

Autonomous underwater gliders are proving to be valuable tools for ocean sampling, and are being adopted remarkably rapidly by the oceanographic community. Oceanography has been primarily an observational science in the sense that almost every known phenomenon in the ocean was observed before it was predicted theoretically. Thus, new ways of observing the ocean have resulted in new scientific discoveries. The primary long-term goal of this project is to demonstrate the use of gliders to address basic scientific problems. OBJECTIVES Gliders are fulfilling the promise of continuous, sustained observation of the ocean down to length scales on the order of kilometers, a range now commonly termed the submesoscale. Gliders are proving to be especially useful in boundary currents. Glider data are being assimilated into regional ocean models, and because they are sustained in the region of interest, these data are often found to be profoundly influential in the predicted ocean state. We propose to use glider data to address these major issues: • The temporal and spatial modulation of the submesoscale • Variability of western boundary current